Desperate Remedies
He took her hand in both his, and looked down upon the lids of her eyes.
‘I pity you sometimes,’ he said more emphatically.
‘I am pitiable, perhaps; so are many people. Why do you pity me?’
‘I think that you make yourself needlessly sad.’
‘Not needlessly.’
‘Yes, needlessly. Why should you be separated from your brother so much,
when you might have him to stay with you till he is well?’
‘That can’t be,’ she said, turning away.
He went on, ‘I think the real and only good thing that can be done for
him is to get him away from Budmouth awhile; and I have been wondering
whether it could not be managed for him to come to my house to live for
a few weeks. Only a quarter of a mile from you. How pleasant it would
be!’
‘It would.’
He moved himself round immediately to the front of her, and held her
hand more firmly, as he continued, ‘Cytherea, why do you say “It would,”
so entirely in the tone of abstract supposition? I want him there: I
want him to be my brother, too. Then make him so, and be my wife! I
cannot live without you. O Cytherea, my darling, my love, come and be my
wife!’
His face bent closer and closer to hers, and the last words sank to a
whisper as weak as the emotion inspiring it was strong.
She said firmly and distinctly, ‘Yes, I will.’
‘Next month?’ he said on the instant, before taking breath.
‘No; not next month.’
‘The next?’
‘No.’
‘December? Christmas Day, say?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘O, you darling!’ He was about to imprint a kiss upon her pale, cold
mouth, but she hastily covered it with her hand.
‘Don’t kiss me--at least where we are now!’ she whispered imploringly.
‘Why?’
‘We are too near God.’
He gave a sudden start, and his face flushed. She had spoken so
emphatically that the words ‘Near God’ echoed back again through the
hollow building from the far end of the chancel.
‘What a thing to say!’ he exclaimed; ‘surely a pure kiss is not
inappropriate to the place!’
‘No,’ she replied, with a swelling heart; ‘I don’t know why I burst out
so--I can’t tell what has come over me! Will you forgive me?’
‘How shall I say “Yes” without judging you? How shall I say “No” without
losing the pleasure of saying “Yes?”’ He was himself again.
‘I don’t know,’ she absently murmured.
‘I’ll say “Yes,”’ he answered daintily. ‘It is sweeter to fancy we
are forgiven, than to think we have not sinned; and you shall have the
sweetness without the need.’
She did not reply, and they moved away. The church was nearly dark now,
and melancholy in the extreme. She stood beside him while he locked
the door, then took the arm he gave her, and wound her way out of the
churchyard with him. Then they walked to the house together, but the
great matter having been set at rest, she persisted in talking only on
indifferent subjects.
‘Christmas Day, then,’ he said, as they were parting at the end of the
shrubbery.
‘I meant Old Christmas Day,’ she said evasively.
‘H’m, people do not usually attach that meaning to the words.’
‘No; but I should like it best if it could not be till then?’ It seemed
to be still her instinct to delay the marriage to the utmost.
‘Very well, love,’ he said gently. ‘’Tis a fortnight longer still; but
never mind. Old Christmas Day.’
9. THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER
‘There. It will be on a Friday!’
She sat upon a little footstool gazing intently into the fire. It was
the afternoon of the day following that of the steward’s successful
solicitation of her hand.
‘I wonder if it would be proper in me to run across the park and tell
him it is a Friday?’ she said to herself, rising to her feet, looking
at her hat lying near, and then out of the window towards the Old
House. Proper or not, she felt that she must at all hazards remove the
disagreeable, though, as she herself owned, unfounded impression the
coincidence had occasioned. She left the house directly, and went to
search for him.
Manston was in the timber-yard, looking at the sawyers as they worked.
Cytherea came up to him hesitatingly. Till within a distance of a few
yards she had hurried forward with alacrity--now that the practical
expression of his face became visible she wished almost she had never
sought him on such an errand; in his business-mood he was perhaps very
stern.
‘It will be on a Friday,’ she said confusedly, and without any preface.
‘Come this way!’ said Manston, in the tone he used for workmen, not
being able to alter at an instant’s notice. He gave her his arm and
led her back into the avenue, by which time he was lover again. ‘On
a Friday, will it, dearest? You do not mind Fridays, surely? That’s
nonsense.’
‘Not seriously mind them, exactly--but if it could be any other day?’
‘Well, let us say Old Christmas Eve, then. Shall it be Old Christmas
Eve?’
‘Yes, Old Christmas Eve.’
‘Your word is solemn, and irrevocable now?’
‘Certainly, I have solemnly pledged my word; I should not have promised
to marry you if I had not meant it. Don’t think I should.’ She spoke the
words with a dignified impressiveness.
‘You must not be vexed at my remark, dearest. Can you think the worse of
an ardent man, Cytherea, for showing some anxiety in love?’
‘No, no.’ She could not say more. She was always ill at ease when he
spoke of himself as a piece of human nature in that analytical way, and
wanted to be out of his presence. The time of day, and the proximity
of the house, afforded her a means of escape. ‘I must be with Miss
Aldclyffe now--will you excuse my hasty coming and going?’ she said
prettily. Before he had replied she had parted from him.
‘Cytherea, was it Mr. Manston I saw you scudding away from in the avenue
just now?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea joined her.
‘Yes.’
‘“Yes.” Come, why don’t you say more than that? I hate those taciturn
“Yesses” of yours. I tell you everything, and yet you are as close as
wax with me.’
‘I parted from him because I wanted to come in.’
‘What a novel and important announcement! Well, is the day fixed?’
‘Yes.’
Miss Aldclyffe’s face kindled into intense interest at once. ‘Is it
indeed? When is it to be?’
‘On Old Christmas Eve.’
‘Old Christmas Eve.’ Miss Aldclyffe drew Cytherea round to her front,
and took a hand in each of her own. ‘And then you will be a bride!’
she said slowly, looking with critical thoughtfulness upon the maiden’s
delicately rounded cheeks.
The normal area of the colour upon each of them decreased perceptibly
after that slow and emphatic utterance by the elder lady.
Miss Aldclyffe continued impressively, ‘You did not say “Old Christmas
Eve” as a fiancee should have said the words: and you don’t receive my
remark with the warm excitement that foreshadows a bright future.... How
many weeks are there to the time?’
‘I have not reckoned them.’
‘Not? Fancy a girl not counting the weeks! I find I must take the
lead in this matter--you are so childish, or frightened, or stupid, or
something, about it. Bring me my diary, and we will count them at once.’
Cytherea silently fetched the book.
Miss Aldclyffe opened the diary at the page containing the almanac,
and counted sixteen weeks, which brought her to the thirty-first of
December--a Sunday. Cytherea stood by, looking on as if she had no
appetite for the scene.
‘Sixteen to the thirty-first. Then let me see, Monday will be the first
of January, Tuesday the second, Wednesday third, Thursday fourth, Friday
fifth--you have chosen a Friday, as I declare!’
‘A Thursday, surely?’ said Cytherea.
‘No: Old Christmas Day comes on a Saturday.’
The perturbed little brain had reckoned wrong. ‘Well, it must be a
Friday,’ she murmured in a reverie.
‘No: have it altered, of course,’ said Miss Aldclyffe cheerfully.
‘There’s nothing bad in Friday, but such a creature as you will be
thinking about its being unlucky--in fact, I wouldn’t choose a
Friday myself to be married on, since all the other days are equally
available.’
‘I shall not have it altered,’ said Cytherea firmly; ‘it has been
altered once already: I shall let it be.’
XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. THE FIFTH OF JANUARY. BEFORE DAWN
We pass over the intervening weeks. The time of the story is thus
advanced more than a quarter of a year.
On the midnight preceding the morning which would make her the wife of
a man whose presence fascinated her into involuntariness of bearing,
and whom in absence she almost dreaded, Cytherea lay in her little bed,
vainly endeavouring to sleep.
She had been looking back amid the years of her short though varied
past, and thinking of the threshold upon which she stood. Days and
months had dimmed the form of Edward Springrove like the gauzes of a
vanishing stage-scene, but his dying voice could still be heard faintly
behind. That a soft small chord in her still vibrated true to his
memory, she would not admit: that she did not approach Manston with
feelings which could by any stretch of words be called hymeneal, she
calmly owned.
‘Why do I marry him?’ she said to herself. ‘Because Owen, dear Owen my
brother, wishes me to marry him. Because Mr. Manston is, and has been,
uniformly kind to Owen, and to me. “Act in obedience to the dictates
of common-sense,” Owen said, “and dread the sharp sting of poverty. How
many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason,
to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material comforts, which after all
go far to make life endurable, even if not supremely happy.”
‘’Tis right, I suppose, for him to say that. O, if people only knew what
a timidity and melancholy upon the subject of her future grows up in the
heart of a friendless woman who is blown about like a reed shaken with
the wind, as I am, they would not call this resignation of one’s self
by the name of scheming to get a husband. Scheme to marry? I’d rather
scheme to die! I know I am not pleasing my heart; I know that if I only
were concerned, I should like risking a single future. But why should I
please my useless self overmuch, when by doing otherwise I please those
who are more valuable than I?’
In the midst of desultory reflections like these, which alternated
with surmises as to the inexplicable connection that appeared to exist
between her intended husband and Miss Aldclyffe, she heard dull noises
outside the walls of the house, which she could not quite fancy to be
caused by the wind. She seemed doomed to such disturbances at critical
periods of her existence. ‘It is strange,’ she pondered, ‘that this my
last night in Knapwater House should be disturbed precisely as my first
was, no occurrence of the kind having intervened.’
As the minutes glided by the noise increased, sounding as if some one
were beating the wall below her window with a bunch of switches. She
would gladly have left her room and gone to stay with one of the maids,
but they were without doubt all asleep.
The only person in the house likely to be awake, or who would have
brains enough to comprehend her nervousness, was Miss Aldclyffe, but
Cytherea never cared to go to Miss Aldclyffe’s room, though she was
always welcome there, and was often almost compelled to go against her
will.
The oft-repeated noise of switches grew heavier upon the wall, and was
now intermingled with creaks, and a rattling like the rattling of dice.
The wind blew stronger; there came first a snapping, then a crash, and
some portion of the mystery was revealed. It was the breaking off and
fall of a branch from one of the large trees outside. The smacking
against the wall, and the intermediate rattling, ceased from that time.
Well, it was the tree which had caused the noises. The unexplained
matter was that neither of the trees ever touched the walls of the house
during the highest wind, and that trees could not rattle like a man